25-05-2025
Outdated Foreign Office dogma makes Britain weak. Chagos proves it
Future historians should not waste time arguing about when exactly it became inevitable that Britain would surrender its sovereignty over one of the world's most formidable military bases.
I can tell them now: 12.55pm Eastern Daylight Time on May 22 2019. At that moment, the United Nations General Assembly in New York passed a Resolution demanding Britain's withdrawal from the Chagos Islands, including the base on Diego Garcia.
This decision, endorsing an earlier opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), made Britain's departure a racing certainty.
Why? Not because either measure carried the full force of international law. The whole point about General Assembly Resolutions and ICJ opinions is that they are not binding.
No, the real reason why we were sure to yield eventually is that the sacred dogma of British diplomats allowed for no other outcome.
I spent nearly eight years in the Foreign Office and Downing Street, including five in the Foreign Secretary's Private Office, witnessing British diplomacy in action. I can tell you that your representatives really do believe in what they call the 'rules-based international system', meaning the assembly of laws and institutions created after 1945 to restrain the behaviour of states.
If the UN and an international court say that Britain should relinquish this or that territory, then our diplomats will advise that we must obey.
Can the Foreign Secretary overrule them? Of course, but Foreign Secretaries come and go. Eventually there will be one who gives way and David Lammy is clearly that man.
His officials will have told him that we cannot preserve the international order unless we are prepared to live by its strictures. They will have cautioned that defiance would invite the charge of double standards from the countries of the 'Global South'.
They will have warned that if we are going to rally these nations against Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a breach of international law, then we have to obey the law ourselves.
So don't fall for Sir Keir Starmer's claim that the deal handing the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is really about guaranteeing the future of the military facility or protecting national security. That argument has been retro-fitted to a decision based above all on a sincere devotion to the international system.
What should we make of this venerated dogma of British diplomacy? In my former life, I would ask our officials: is upholding the system and obeying the rules an end in itself? What about the national interest?
They would reply that there was no contradiction. We have an interest in preserving this world order because, alongside America, we built it. The system gives the UK outsized influence, through permanent membership of the Security Council. And now that we are no longer a superpower, the rules protect our safety too.
But look where this rigid thinking has led us. We have just agreed to relinquish sovereignty over a military asset described by the Prime Minister as 'unique and vital' and 'right at the foundation of our security'.
And we have done it without being under any legal obligation. Has any other country in history been doctrinaire and purist enough to give up sovereign territory on this basis? Which other nation would change the status of a crucial military facility for this reason?
Do not underestimate how extraordinary Britain's behaviour is. Many states refuse to negotiate over what they consider sovereign territory. Some, like Ukraine, have constitutions that forbid governments from sacrificing even a square inch, no matter what the UN might say.
Will Britain's purism make us uniquely virtuous or uniquely vulnerable? Anyone who has endured the self-serving cant of the nations of the 'Global South' will know the answer.
They cannot fail to see how the Chagos agreement has lowered the bar for challenging the UK. A country with a grievance does not need to get a binding judgement against us; an advisory opinion plus a General Assembly Resolution will do.
That is not as hard as you might think: Africa and the Caribbean together are close to a majority of the UN. If Mauritius could extract 58 islands and one military base without even winning a definitive ruling, then the message is that British diplomats will not resist a former colony on a mission, however extravagant the demand.
And what about Russia and China? What does it say about Britain's resolve if two non-binding international decisions are enough to make us terminate our sovereignty over a 'unique and vital' base?
The great irony is that our diplomats think they are being modern and forward-looking, yet all around them the world has changed. It made sense to uphold the 'rules-based international system' when America was with us. But today our biggest ally no longer even pretends to believe in this cause.
There might once have been a case for winning international support through scrupulous obedience to global courts and conventions. Yet Russia is now tearing Europe's largest country to pieces. Faced with Putin's aggression, purity and virtue get you nowhere. All that counts is power and will.
Never mind preserving the entire international order, if we get through the next 20 years without Russia waging general war on Europe, or China coming to blows with America, that will represent success.
Preserving peace will require the West to subordinate everything else to deterring Russia and China. How does it help when Britain sacrifices sovereignty over a base that commands the Indian Ocean while making itself more vulnerable to endless new challenges from the 'Global South'?
The truth is that the Chagos agreement is the last gasp of the old world, when the West was dominant after the Cold War, and we could afford to sign up to every international court and convention.
Remarkably, our diplomats still cling to the mindset of that era. Unless they change, the danger is that our adversaries will be bolder and fiercer and we might end up in a war that we could have avoided if we had been stronger earlier. If so, there will be absolutely nothing left of the international order.
By striving to preserve perfection, our outdated diplomats increase the risk that we will lose it all.
